Human ambition to divine mission

Theodore Mascarenhas
‘Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them.’
These words of Washington Irving, in his ‘The Sketch Book’, seem to be the most apt description of the man, St Francis Xavier, often called the Apostle of the East.
Filled with apostolic zeal, driven by missionary goals, and set on fire by the love of Jesus, Francis embarked for India, then to Japan, and died on the shore overlooking China.His missionary work was completed in only 11 years, and he died of exhaustion at age 46.
Yes, indeed, his was a great mind… also a strong character, a generous heart, and an indomitable spirit.
Crossing fierce oceans in primitive ships, living in the hardships of nature, amid hunger and disease, defying the barriers of culture and language, seemed nothing to this great man, because his mind was filled with one purpose—ad majorem Dei gloriam (for the greater glory of God).
The great and saintly Jesuit, Francis, would say it in his own words: “It is not the actual physical exertion that counts towards one’s progress, nor the nature of the task, but the spirit of faith with which it is undertaken.”
His zeal, initially, was directed towards worldly goals—name, fame, wealth and glory. And then the inevitable happened—his conversion. In the spiritual exercises directed by St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order challenged Francis with the Biblical quotation: ‘What would it profit a man to gain the whole world if he should lose his soul in the process?’
The one who initially sought everything in this world, renounced what he desired. For that very reason, he today owns all that he gave up—name, fame and glory; you just have to glance at the millions of pilgrims who throng to pray at his tomb, to revere his mortal relics, and to invoke his intercession before God in their needs.
Francis was a zealous missionary, who sought to proclaim the Good News to the boundaries of the earth, and to manifest God’s love in his personal life and witness. His heart overflowed with love for the poor. His love knew no bounds. He spent himself utterly for his people and was ready, perhaps even eager, to give his life for their welfare. After all, he was the apostle of Jesus who had said, “No greater love can a man have than to lay down his life for his friends.”
Francis’s life of discipline and mortification was simply heroic. Despite difficulties of food, intense tropical heat, difficult terrain, and lack of transportation, the zeal in the man, for his Master’s work, led him from village to village on foot to proclaim God’s love.
Instead of seeking out comfortable lodgings and ease, Francis decided to live with the poor, sleep like the poor, eat and drink with the poor, and become poor himself. His food was the same as that of the poorest people—rice and water. His sleep was for but three hours a night at most, and that too in a fisherman’s cabin on the ground. The remainder of the night he passed with God or serving a neighbour. In his own words: “It is impossible to find a saint who did not take the two ‘p’s seriously: prayer and penance.” In the midst of the hurry of his external duties, he kept on a sustained interior conversation with God.
So zeal-filled was the man, that languages were no barrier for him. He began to learn Tamil, and spent four months in Tuticorin trying to master the new language. With the help of other priests he had important prayers and the Commandments translated into the local language. He later commissioned Fr Henrique Anriquez, whose mother was an Indian and who had a natural flair for languages, to improve upon these. He even directed that a Tamil grammar and lexicon be prepared. Moreover, the missionaries under his charge, had to use only Tamil among themselves, so as to make them fluent in the language of the people.
One could conclude in the words of monsignor Francis Correa, who in his book ‘Missionary Heralds of India’, writes about our Goencho Saib: “This highly qualified worker in the vineyard of the Lord had a tremendously high degree of virtues necessary in a missionary, namely an abiding love for God and an undying zeal for His glory, sympathy as well as empathy for the poor and needy, and a strong will to labour for fellow men forgetting one’s personal interests and needs.”
All said and done what marks out Francis from other men and women is his zeal. As he himself says: “Be great in little things.”
The writer is the bishop of Ranchi, Jharkhand. He hails from Camurlim, Salcete.